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Choral Reading

Choral reading is reading aloud in unison with a whole class or group of students. Choral reading helps build students' fluency, self-confidence, and motivation. Because students are reading aloud together, students who may ordinarily feel self-conscious or nervous about reading aloud have built-in support.

More fluency strategies

Why use choral reading?

It can provide less skilled readers the opportunity to practice and receive support before being required to read on their own.

It provides a model for fluent reading as students listen.

It helps improve the ability to read sight words.

How to use choral reading

Choose a book or passage that works well for reading aloud as a group:

patterned or predictable (for beginning readers)

not too long; and

is at the independent reading level of most students

Provide each student a copy of the text so they may follow along. (Note: You may wish to use an overhead projector or place students at a computer monitor with the text on the screen)

Read the passage or story aloud and model fluent reading for the students.

Ask the students to use a marker or finger to follow along with the text as they read.

Reread the passage and have all students in the group read the story or passage aloud in unison.

Watch: Choral Reading

Go inside Carmen Tisdale's first grade classroom in Columbia, South Carolina to observe how Carmen models fluent expressive reading using text cues as her students follow the text silently. Then, the kids read aloud together. Joanne Meier, our research director, introduces the strategy and reminds teachers to be sure to carefully match the text to your students' reading level and to check in to be sure the kids are understanding what they are reading aloud.

Examples

Language Arts

The following link includes a set of Choral Reading activities with a wide variety of texts, including books, magazines, newspapers, electronic media, comics, jokes, poems/verse, and non-traditional types of print:

Children's books to use with this strategy

Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices

These poems introduce various insects and their lives; ideal for sharing aloud and for relating to informational books on insects.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

By: Bill Martin Jr

Age Level: 3-6

Reading Level: Beginning Reader

This title needs no introduction nor do its spin-offs like Baby Bear Baby Bear, What Do You See?, Panda Bear Panda Bear, What Do You See? or Polar Bear Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

Autumnblings

By: Douglas Florian

Genre: Poetry

Age Level: 6-9

Reading Level: Independent Reader

Cheery watercolor illustrations combine with short, playful poems to evoke the changes that happen in the fall. It’s "Awe-Tumn" after all, when "…autumn leaves/Leave me in awe."

Mr. Popper's Penguins

By: Richard Atwater, Florence Atwater

Genre: Fiction

Age Level: 6-9

Reading Level: Independent Reader

When Admiral Drake sends a penguin named Captain Cook to the Popper family, Mr. Popper's dreams of seeing the world begin to come true. Humor abounds in this early Newbery Honor book as readers follow Mr. Popper and his penguins to Antarctica.

You Read to Me, I'll Read to You: Very Short Stories to Read Together

By: Mary Ann Hoberman

Genre: Poetry

Age Level: 3-6

Reading Level: Beginning Reader

Rhyming tales written for two voices makes an ideal — and humorous — introduction to readers' theater. Well known fairy tales have been adapted, reorganized and reinvigorated with lively language and sprightly illustrations, worthy of many dramatizations.

Comments

There's an article in the Reading Teacher on choral reading by Dr. David Paige that helped me. I have also recorded my class during the first reading and then later in the week after they improved. The students really liked hearing how they improved.